Finally...bigger blog pictures

I finally figured out how to make the pictures on my blog bigger!!! Now all of my *few* readers can actually see my pictures the way that I do on my big MAC screen at home. I'm VERY excited. In fact, I got the sweetest email from my mom yesterday after she saw my test photos...thanks Mom for your compliments. You are definitely my most loyal reader ;) My older posts might look a bit weird now that I've changed the picture size, but I'll be trying to re-edit them when I have free time. I've been learning some fun stuff on photoshop lately and am finally feeling comfortable editing my photos and trying to make them look even better than they do straight out of the camera.

On to my weekend which was extremely low key. Lee and I spent the weekend having dinner with friends/family, doing laundry, cleaning the house, watching Law & Order Criminal Intent re-runs, and playing tennis. I have to say....it was one of the most relaxing weekends I've had in a long time! Lee has been working tirelessly on some professional projects and so this was the first weekend in months that he didn't have to work and it was so wonderful.

One of the things we were researching this weekend as we were sitting around is a good vacation place in CA that allows dogs (of all sizes). We're thinking escaping for the 4th, but we want to take our pups with us. We found some houses/cabins in Big Bear area & Lake Arrowhead, but I was thinking more of a resort - pool w/ drinks/tennis/maid service, but we couldn't find anything really great that allowed are doggies. Anyone out there know of such a place? I don't think I can take anymore searching on the internet.

I worked on the last few images from Colin's b-day party, so enjoy. This week I'll be working on the few shots I have from Freddy & Laura's wedding which I'll post a little at a time.

Happy Week!!

This is a test post

I'm trying to make my photos bigger!

What is your life's purpose?

That might sound like a pretty heavy topic for this blog, but recently I came across Steve Pavlina's blog (which I highly recommend reading) and his interesting article titled "How to discover your life's purpose in 20 minutes". I was completely intrigued by this because I have always wondered what the bigger picture is for me - what my life's meaning is; my purpose. Many women say that once you have children you know what it is - to be a mother, but I have a feeling that for a lot of us, it is so much more than that (but including it too). If you read Steve's article he explains that his purpose is layered - it's not cut and dry or just ONE thing.

So I haven't had a chance to do this exercise yet, but I plan on taking some time this weekend to sit down in a quiet space and see what happens. I will post my results next week.

What is your life's purpose?

Recycleable toothbrush & Colin's B-day party

This past weekend was great for Lee & I because we did alot of relaxing. Actually I did alot of relaxing while he was working on a big project, but me being relaxed is relaxing for him :) Friday night we went to dinner with some friends at Lily's in Venice Beach. They have a great outdoor patio with hanging lanterns and yummy French food. On Saturday I got my hair done and then Lee and I spent the day working on his big "project" which was pretty cool. More to come on that later. Saturday night we ate left over lasagna that Lee had made during the week (Maybe he has a little Italian in him....it was SO good) and then went out and got gelato at the 3rd street promenade. Then on Sunday I went to the market and found something that I've been researching for a while now and finally found....a Recyclable Toothbrush!!! Recycline has come up with a toothbrush that is 100% recyclable (including all of the packaging) and made from recycled products (yogurt containers). The only hard part is that you have to send the toothbrush back to Recycline, but they pay for the mailing, just download the label from their website http://www.recycline.com/toothbrush.html These toothbrushes are now sold at Trader Joes and Target, along with a variety of other stores so you really have no excuse NOT to start using one. Think about how much plastic we could save if each of us used a recycled toothbrush every month!

The rest of Sunday was spent playing tennis with Lee, taking the dogs to this incredible dog park in Kester Canyon, and doing laundry - it was fun.
I also did work for my photoshop class and edited some of my pictures. Remember the sneak peak I posted of Colin's b-day party a few weeks ago? Well here are more pictures from the party. I will post the rest tomorrow.....

Operation Welcome Home Brunch - Part 2

I had a personal growth experience on Wednesday that I thought I'd share. As I wrote in Monday's post, I took a bunch of random pictures over last weekend at my friends' wedding which I was SO excited about. This is the first wedding that I've taken pictures of with the intention of wanting to shoot a wedding "for real" some day (get paid). When I uploaded the pictures to my computer, a TON of them were out of focus. Not extremely out of focus, but enough that you wouldn't really want to look at them for long :)

I was really bummed and felt awful mainly because I am really hard on myself and strive too much for perfection which leads me to be extremely disappointed when, well.......I'm not perfect (which is most of the time). So I wallowed in my sorrows that night, even after Lee reassured me that this was all part of the learning process, and then went to bed. On Thursday morning, remembering what he said and determined not to wallow, but learn and move on, I logged into the Digital Wedding Forum and created a new thread asking other photographers why my pics were so out of focus. I also emailed Lindsey from Sweet Monday, hoping she would have pity on me ;) After a few rounds on my thread and a few emails with Lindsey, I realized what mistake I had made - manually focusing my lens. At an event like a wedding, I should NOT manually focus - nope, never, nada. Makes it WAY too hard since it's an event and an uncontrolled environment.

Although I felt a bit like "DUH!!", I realized that I really DID learn something. Although I may only have about 15 pictures to show for Freddy & Laura's wedding, the other 200 are a great tool to learn from! So that was my instance of personal growth; embracing my mistakes instead of expecting perfection. HUGE!

So, on to some pictures. Here are a few more from the ND Brunch.


Toni Reinis, Executive Director/co-Founder


John Keaveney, Founder of New Directions
Rudy Grimaldo, Board Member and a veteran who fought in Operation Enduring Freedom

Cindy Young, Director of Development for New Directions

Operation Welcome Home Brunch - Part One

Here is Part One of pictures from the New Directions, Operation Welcome Home brunch on Saturday. I had such a good time taking pictures of this event and meeting some new people who have a commen interest and beliefe in helping our Veterans.

The Family Room at ND was set up so nicely:

The tables were labeled with very meaningful words that are the foundation of New Directions' mission. I wasn't going to add all of them to this post, but I think it's very inspiring.







Each person was given information about New Directions Inc., Chris's Place, and ND dog tags.

Nice Spread!
The wonderful LaShanda and the registration table...

Lee speaking with former Board Member, Troy Evans


Toni Reinis speaking with guests


More tomorrow!